Until My Dying Breath
by Theriechenbachevent
Summary: Merlin had always maintained that mankind displayed a singular proclivity to pain. He had seen it countless times in his life and fallen victim to it more times than he could count and yet lived to see another day. To fall in love and never have it returned was often a fate worse than death.


**A/N:**

HAPPY NEW YEARRRRR

also don't kill me *hides*

I'm catching up ! I swear! Cross my heart and hope to die!

 **Until My Dying Breath**

"You know, one of these days, she's going to catch you and all this is going to look less like admiration and more like stalking." Merlin suddenly appeared at Godric's side as he watched his sister lead a class of first years through a herbology lesson. The younger man only narrowly avoided collapsing into the tree next to him through sheer willpower.

" _Father!_ Don't do that! What if I had attacked you?"

"You'd have never had the chance to do it, what with the way you're drooling over Helga." Merlin watched a portly boy take a particularly strong sniff of paralyzing petunias and faint, ignoring the vivid rouge coloring of Godric's face in response.

"What - I don't - " Godric straightened his collars, raking a nervous hand through his windswept dark hair. The shaky movements looked foreign on a body as sturdy and muscular as his. Merlin rolled his eyes, pleased to see some normalcy in his eldest son after Salazar's abrupt flight from the school a few years prior.

"Don't babble Godric, you look ridiculous. You can't honestly have thought no one knew? Even Rowena knows, for goodness sakes."

"It's that obvious?"

Merlin's silence proved all the confirmation that he needed, the two continuing to watch over the young woman. It was late afternoon, and the sun as it dipped low, set the whole of the castle awash in hues of fiery red, oranges and golds.

The immortal wizard didn't miss the softening in Godric's eyes as he took in the way the sunset glinted off of Helga's rosy hair. His eyes followed her movements unfailingly, as if committing the whole of it to memory. The way she flitted from student to student, brushing dirt from the brow of a little girl to steadying the hands of a nervous boy, about to depot his first plant. Her brow glistened with the efforts of being on her feet all day, and her cheeks colored with the effort to appear tireless.

So yes, he could tell that Godric was wildly, profoundly, passionately, _wretchedly_ in love with Helga.

"Why haven't you said anything?" Merlin asked a while later, as Helga led the class inside, the session over for the day.

"To who?" Godric asked, though he knew what Merlin was referring to. "To Helga? You know I can't."

"Because of Salazar?"

Godric sighed at that, turning his gaze as Helga disappeared from view, her absence already taking a toll on his face. His eyes now fixed on the sunset, he seemed to speak as if speaking about someone else.

"Helga has always loved him, Father. Her heart has belonged to him alone, ever since we were children. I've known that since before I became aware of my own pathetic heart."

"Surely you can't be holding back on account of some sense of chivalric pride Godric. Take it from someone who knows, a love like this could destroy you. Your heart can only take so much pain and sorrow, son."

Godric smiled wanefully at Merlin.

"And Helga? What about her pain? The pain of knowing that Salazar left even when they both knew they were in love with each other? The pain of mourning a life that she can never have? The sorrow of the children she will never bear, the mother she can never become because the man whose wife she wanted to become has left her? What about the pain she lives with, the pain that reduces her to sobbing until her swollen eyes run dry, her body unable to express the pain of her broken heart? I can only watch from afar as Rowena tries to mend her heart but she knows as well as I do that that kind of pain can't ever be healed."

Merlin couldn't say a word in response, only listen as he seemed to have opened an opening through which Godric could finally voice his turmoil.

"Am I to then try to woo her? Am I to tell Helga that I can do for her what Salazar cannot? Is that fair to my brother? To try to steal the heart of the woman he gave up because he believed that he was sacrificing his love for a purpose greater than himself? To these two who are going through so much pain because of the other, am I to try and attain happiness for myself? Is that not selfish? Would I not be the most dreadful and piteous of creatures? Should I pursue Helga who has become Achlys personified?"

"You would give up the chance to end your one-sided love by confessing? If she were to refuse you, would you not be at peace, child?"

"And how could I make myself so greedy as to do such a thing, Lord Emrys." The use of his spiritual name told Merlin how miserable his son was. The attempt to distance himself from Merlin at such a time to avoid the offerings of pity that Merlin would make unto him were being firmly rejected.

The sunset had now descended into twilight, with the reds and oranges of earlier giving way to brilliantly deep pinks and richly colored purples and indigo's that set the forest below ablaze in fantastical wonder.

"How could I think of giving my soul rest and ease when they two will spend eternity until they die in agony? I couldn't do it Father."

Merlin felt the hot tears sting his face as his heart broke again and again for the pitiful man in front of him. The tears that cascaded down Godric's cheeks went unnoticed despite the steely, determined look his eyes now had.

"If the one I love is tormented so, for the whole of her life, then so be it. I too follow her, willingly and desperately into the same. Until the day the Gods' reap my soul, I too, will live the same life of agony and suffering."

He took a deep breath, collecting himself, as the last vestiges of the sun dipped below the horizon, plunging their world into darkness.

"Until my dying breath, I swear it so."

 _Fin._


End file.
